GMO (GM) Roundup Ready Food Crops Were Created to Accommodate Spraying with Glyphosate 'key' ingredient in "Roundup"...

I never paid much attention to ORGANIC food.  It seemed wasteful to me to buy something that was 'special' when there was no need to do so.  In February this year, 2015, I was posting on my Facebook (FB) account, to my friends on the East Coast when I saw a news article come across my FB news feed that said something about GMO Roundup ready food crops ,and something called Glyphosate.  This peaked my curiosity so I went out onto the Internet and did some research on both GMO and Glyphosate.  I read many conflicting views on both of these subjects and soon came to realize that you could NOT have one without the other.  GMO (GM) Roundup ready food crops were created to accommodate spraying these crops with a chemical herbicide called Glyphosate, and I learned that Glyphosate is the 'key' ingredient in a commercially available product called "Roundup".   May I add here, that I read BOTH sides of this issue and watched several videos, most notable for me is a video made by Dr. Thierry Vrain, a noted Soil Biologists,  Genetic Scientist and former head of Molecular Biology at Agriculture Canada for thirty (30) years.  This was all it took for me to continue learning and blogging on my FB account about both GM Roundup ready food crops and Glyphosate.  My husband and I went ORGANIC at the end of February 2015.  After going ORGANIC we both lost all symptoms of Acid Reflux (GERD) that we both had for 21 years and I lost my Asthma that I suffered with for twenty one (21) years, which is the time period that GM Roundup ready food crops have been in our food supply here in California.
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Which came first the chicken or the egg? I don't have the answer to that question, but I do know that if you ask me, "Which came first, GM (GMO) food OR Glyphosate," the answer would be GLYPHOSATE, which is the 'key' ingredient in Roundup. Today Roundup has 2,4D with Dioxin in the mix to help kill Franken weeds that are now growing in GM Roundup ready food crop fields. The Glyphosate story starts back in 1950 when Swiss chemists Henry Martin, who worked for the Swiss company 'Cilag' synthesized Glyphosate. Later in 1964 Stauffer Chemical acquired Glyphosate and patented it as a chemical chelator BECAUSE Glyphosate BINDS and REMOVED minerals,  calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper and zinc. This is what Glyphosate does to food crops when it is sprayed on the crops and goes INSIDE the food crops.   When you eat  Roundup ready food crops,  you are deprived of essential minerals in your diet, for your health. GM food crops are NOT the same as ORGANIC food crops. The two are NOT equal.
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Glyphosate was patented as an herbicide in 1974.
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Compared to other herbicides Glyphosate was originally (1974) considered ideal because it did not outright kill animal life. Glyphosate kills plant life and it kills bacterial life through the Shikimate pathway found in both plants and in bacteria. What Monsanto scientists did not understand at that time (1974) is that all animal life, including human life, is dependent upon 'good' bacterial action in the gut where we have 70% of our immune system. Glyphosate destroys our immune systems. Glyphosate was patented as an ANTIBIOTIC and this patent was published in August, 2010. The original application to patent Glyphosate as an antibiotic was filed in August, 2003, so Monsanto KNEW as far back ac August, 2003 that Glyphosate was a POWERFUL antibiotic, and it killed bacterial life in both human guts and in animal guts. Monsanto STILL CLAIMED that Glyphosate was NOT harmful to people or animals, yet they knew it was harmful. The bacteria that Glyphosate does NOT KILL are Salmonella and E. coli. When the 'good' gut bacteria of both humans and animals are destroyed, both Salmonella and E.coli grow 'wild' in the gut and this leads to serious gut related illness.  Acid Reflux (GERD),  Leaky gut, celiac disease including Crohn's disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) plus other autoimmune diseases including Parkinson's are the result when Glyphosate kills off normal, healthy gut (flora) bacteria. Seventy per cent of our immune systems are located in our guts and this fact was proved with the research done during the "Human Geome Project"  back in the nineteen nineties. Monsanto and their paid PR people appear  to ignore the findings of the "Human Geome Project".
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Monsanto's patent number for Glyphosate as an ANTIBIOTIC is US 7771736B2 . Go ahead, look it up on the Internet.
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Glyphosate is a patented chelator, a patented herbicide and a patented antibiotic. And it goes INSIDE all food crops it is sprayed on , both Roundup ready food crops and other crops where it is sprayed upon harvest to dry the crops.
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Glyphosate is sprayed on Roundup ready soy and corn food crops that are used to feed food animals. When food animals eat the Roundup ready food crops in feed lots, they only eat these crops, and this greatly increases the amount of Glyphosate that these animals ingest because Glyphosate is INSIDE these food crops. Glyphosate is bio-accumulating.  it is present in the meat of food animals when the animals are slaughtered. If Roundup ready GM alfalfa is approved for feeding dairy cows (cows are ruminants and eat grasses) we will see Glyphosate present in all food products made from dairy cows milk PLUS dairy cows will also have Salmonella and E. coli in their guts because Glyphosate used on GM alfalfa will destroy the good gut bacteria in dairy cows guts and this will affect all dairy products. Cows fed GM will end up with mainly Salmonella and E coli in their guts. Dairy products includes ice cream, cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, cream, butter. This will also increases the amount of Glyphosate that is ingested by human beings whom eat these dairy products as well as increase the chances of ingesting both Salmonella and E. coli from these GM dairy products. The only way to avoid this happening to you is to eat only ORGANIC dairy foods because GM with Glyphosate is NOT present in ORGANIC foods. Both harmful bacteria, Salmonella and E. coli, CAN be present in non-GMO foods because non-GMO classification is based ONLY on the presence of GMO (GM) in the food it is NOT based on the presence of Glyphosate in the food. Remember that some non-GMO foods can be sprayed with Glyphosate upon harvest and they include wheat, beans and sugar cane. Buy only ORGANIC in these products.
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Today you are warned by our news media to be doubly careful to cook all poultry thoroughly because of Salmonella and E.coli contamination in poultry. Remember that chickens and turkeys, the most common forms of poultry in the Western diet, are fed GM soy and corn as their diet. They ingest a great deal of Glyphosate over the course of their feeding life because this IS all they eat. Glyphosate in the animal feed kills off all the good bacteria in their guts, allowing both Salmonella and E. coli, which are both present in their guts but kept in 'check' by good bacteria, to grow. Salmonella and E. coli are both present in mammals guts but good bacteria keep it in 'check'. When good bacteria are destroyed by Glyphosate,  Salmonella and E. coli, takes over the gut flora,  and causes illness. This is WHY slaughtered chickens and turkeys are prone to both Salmonella and E. coli infections today that they were NOT prone to thirty years ago. it is because the birds are fed Glyphosate rich grains, and their guts are filled with Salmonella and E. coli when they are slaughtered.   Often the contents of the gut comes in contact with the flesh during processing. This is WHY many 'farm' poultry processors dip all plucked chickens and turkey s in a strong 'chlorine bleach' solution trying to destroy the Salmonella and E. coli from the bird's guts, that has gotten on the birds flesh during processing. Chlorine bleach, (sodium hydroxide) is a caustic chemical and too much of on the bird's flesh from the dip can contaminate the meat. I remember about 5 years ago that we were cautioned to thoroughly cook eggs because eggs are 'sometimes' prone to Salmonella contamination for the same reason that the bird's flesh is prone to these infections. NOW both you and I KNOW WHY.
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Numerous studies have been done that establish that Glyphosate attacks and destroys liver and kidney tissue in all mammals, and we are human mammals. When your liver is damaged it opens you up to type 2 diabetes. This helps to explain the large number of people today, living  in Western cultures where GM Roundup ready food crops are prevelant,  have type 2 diabetes.
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Full fledged Glyphosate poisoning is very real, and happens to agricultural workers and sometime to everyday gardeners that come in close contact with Roundup by inhaling the air born particles and getting the product on their skin. Remember that there are adjunct (added to amplify) chemicals in Roundup that make it even easier for Glyphosate to penetrate both Roundup ready food crops and go INSIDE the crops, and penetrate human skin and go INSIDE human skin.
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Carol Garnier Dutra

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http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416
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Dr. Berg explains that it is a damaged liver that opens you up to type 2 diabetes.  Remember that Glyphosate damages both kiidneys and liver in all mammals that ingest foods that contain Glyphosate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7fHYSyvxU0
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http://www.genome.gov/10001772
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..." However, data from the USDA, National Cancer Institutes, Centers for Disease Control, have recently surfaced, depicting at steep rise in the rates of kidney disease in the US from the time of the introduction of glyphosate and GM food (engineered primarily to withstand massive application of the herbicide). The death rates more than doubled over the past 30 years. "
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http://panswiss.org/newsroom/glyphosate-linked-to-epidemic-of-kidney-failure-but-regulation-obstructed/
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https://www.google.com/search?q=HUMAN+liver+damage+LIVER+from+glyphosate&biw=1920&bih=935&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CEQQsARqFQoTCMbKxcuGhscCFUMSkgodUyMOLw
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"Celiac disease, and, more generally, gluten intolerance, is a growing problem worldwide, but especially in North America and Europe, where an estimated 5% of the population now suffers from it. Symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, skin rashes, macrocytic anemia and depression. It is a multifactorial disease associated with numerous nutritional deficiencies as well as reproductive issues and increased risk to thyroid disease, kidney failure and cancer. Here, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup®, is the most important causal factor in this epidemic . "...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/
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A Tribute To Lilian Jackson Braun The Author Of The Cat Who...Books

I just learned today that Lilian Jackson Braun passed away in Landrum, South Carolina (June 20, 1913 - June 4, 2011) to God's care last year. She was 97 years old, just 16 days short of her 98th birthday.

I started reading this lady's light, clean, fun fiction back sometime in the early nineteen eighties when one day I found myself looking for something to read that wasn't academic in nature. I cruised the aisles of my local Barnes and Noble, and found several of her 'Cat Who...' books in the paperback section on the aisle labeled 'Mysteries'.

I had read all of the Agatha Christie paper backs in this section so I chose to at least 'try' Lilian Jackson Braun's cat influenced mysteries. After all is said and done I had two cats at home myself, and I have always been fascinated with cat behavior, and I asked myself, "How does a cat get involved in a murder mystery?".

I learned from reading Lilian's Cat Who... books (I have all of them in paperback) that Lilian Jackson Braun was also fascinated with cat behavior. She placed bits of her observations about her own two cats behavior in all of her pieces of fiction based on her own observations of her pet cats.

Lilian wrote her Cat Who... books starting in 1966 when she wrote "The Cat Who Could Read Backwards" right up to June 2011 when she passed away while writing "The Cat Who Smelled Smoke". I know that she had to have had several pairs of cats throughout the years because she wrote her Cat Who... books over the span of forty five (45) years. The longest I have had a cat live has been twenty years, and the longest I have known a domesticated cat to live is twenty-five years.

Lilian made her hero in her Cat Who... books a gentle-man, and a writer, who she named James Mackintosh Qwilleran. Most of the time she referred to her hero as just Qwilleran or he was often called by his fiction friends just, "Qwill"..

Qwilleran happened to inherit a small fortune (everyone's dream), and he moved to a beautiful home that was once an apple barn that he had re-modeled. While reading the stories I often thought about the apple barn that sat in the middle of a Mackintosh Apple farm just outside of Red Oaks Mill in New York State where I lived for two years as a teenager. For a short time I worked for the farmer, who was the owner of this barn, picking Mackintosh apples so this was how I knew what the interior of a real apple barn looks like. The way Lilian described her main character's remodeled, apple barn home brought back memories to me of the apple barn I visited back when I lived and worked for that farmer one summer, back in New York State.

I believe that a real apple barn surrounded by a Mackintosh Apple orchard must have been somewhere in Lilian's background. Lilian was born and grew up in Williamsett, which is a village within the City of Chicopee, Massachusetts. I was born and grew up in Lynn, Mass., and I remember that Mackintosh Apples were also grown there in Massachusetts. Perhaps as a youngster, Lilian too, had picked apples one summer?

The state where Qwilleran lived was never mentioned in the Cat Who... books but I envisioned it, as Lilian wanted the reader to do, as one of the states that boarder Canada, and New York State does boarder Canada at Niagara Falls.

I often thought that Lilian put herself in her hero's shoes to write her stories because she was a writer too, and she always kept two cats.

Now cats aren't violent creatures that would normally figure in a 'real life' mystery story, unless you view them from the viewpoint of a mangled mouse or a tattered bird. You could also envision the view point of a fly, a fly that strays into your house not knowing that the premises are patrolled by a sentry cat on duty. When this errant fly becomes a luscious snack for the vigilant feline, at the moment the fly is snatched from the air up into the cat's mouth, the fly must think that the cat is a violent creature! Yum, says the cat!

Yes, Lilian Jackson Brown was a keen observer of her own cats. What better creatures to observe, and be a part of 'light' mystery stories than two soft, loveable, death dealing cats. The two cats in Lilian's stories are the male Koko, who is super intelligent and precognitive, and Yum, Yum his soft, feminine, not too bright, yet loveable mate.

Lilian Jackson Braun published 29 'Cat Who' books as well as several other related books. She would have had 30 Cat Who...books to her credit but she passed away while doing something that she loved best, writing a Cat Who...book, which would have been her 30th one.

And Lilian Jackson Braun did use an old fashioned typewriter. I never liked having to type on my old fashioned typewriter because it was difficult to correct typos on those old machines.

While I have cats living in my home today, and have had cats all of my life since I was three years old, I haven't as of yet written a piece of fiction with my cats in the starring roles. But that should be on my agenda for the future.

I have written several 'true life' stories, both sad and happy events, that did star my loveable felines, and I have also written about the dogs that have graced my life.

I miss Lilian Jackson Braun. I miss her knowing that there will never be another Cat Who...book written by her. No one can take her place.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2012 Carol Garnier Dutra

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Anita Clemetson and Sweet Georgia Brown

We knew, years ago, that when we adopted several cats, of the same age, that we would have to face the time when they would age, become ill, and leave us.

Our dear Sweet Georgia Brown, pictured here in her red cube bed, has been ill with kidney failure, and thyroid disease. I give her the fortified water she needs, under her skin every evening to supplement her water intake to prevent dehydration, and my husband gives her a pink thyroid pill every morning after breakfast. According to our records we have been doing these tasks since January 10, 2011 so it is close to a year that we have been carrying out this routine to keep our dear Sweet Georgia alive.

Have you ever tried to 'pill' a cat? I leave that task to Dick while I am the administrator of the Lactated Ringer's water every evening. I don't like doing this job but I do it because this mineral enriched water has kept Georgia alive for the past year, and that makes it worth doing.

Georgia is under the care of Dr. Moran, at Family Pet Care on East Street here in Hollister. It is because of Dr. Moran's instructions to us that Georgia has been able to survive with her two diseases as long as she has survived. But right now Georgie is living her last days. I expect that she will 'pass' sometime between today, December 17th and Christmas.

Georgia is 17 going on 18 years old. At first we thought that she was going on 17 but then we found an old dated photograph that told us that Georgia was a year older than we previously thought she was. In people years this makes her going on 72. Actually, that is not very old, at least for a human but for a cat it is getting up in years.

Georgie is a tri-colored orange, black and white Calico. We also adopted her sister, Daisy Mae Brown, pictured in this blog entry on her leopard blanket. Daisy Mae is also a Calico. Daisy Mae had the same Siamese mother and Ginger Tom father, yet the two 'blood' sisters were from two different litters, three months apart in age. While they do resemble each other there are enough differences in their appearance, that it is easy to tell them apart.



We adopted Daisy Mae first, from a friend who worked in the H. R. Department in a company that we both worked for back in 1994. The lady's name is Anita Clemetson, and she was one of the nicest persons we have ever met.

After we adopted Daisy Mae I told Anita that I wanted to adopt another Calico, and I put in my order. I told Anita that the 'new' little one would be named 'Sweet Georgia Brown'.

About three months after I place my order for Sweet Georgia I got a phone call from Anita,

"Carol, Sweet Georgia Brown is in my office, come on over..."

I traveled to Anita's office, which was in building one, and in the middle of her office's floor, I found a very large, brown, cardboard box that contained six very lively, healthy kittens complete with a generous supply of fleas distributed on each of them.

I reached into the box to take Sweet Georgia out, and a tiny, pale orange kitten blocked my access to Georgia. This tiny bit of orange fluff actually hissed at me, and scratched my hand with its' tiny, thin baby claws. With my hands 'itching' from the baby claw scratches on them, I had to walk all the way back to my office in another building to get a pair of yellow, rubber gloves that I kept in my desk, and normally put on when I found myself changing a cartridge on a xerox machine.

With the yellow, rubber gloves on my hands, with the long extention of yellow, rubber glove on both of my arms, I was able to once again reach into that cardboard box, and with the pale orange youngster ripping at both of my hands and my arms, hitting only yellow, rubber glove, I was able to reach Sweet Georgia and grab her by the scruff of her neck, pulling her out of the box.

Anita watched the whole episode from the safety of her chair, and when she saw the 'spunk' that the little orange kitten showed, she made her mind up that she would keep that one for herself. Anita had an older cat at home that needed a companion, and because the little orange kitten was capable of defending herself, Anita figured that she would be able to stand her ground with an older, controlling cat. Yes, I said 'she' in reference to the orange kitten!

Most, over 95% of all orange colored cats are male but every once in a while one comes along that is female, and this was one of the rare females. Anita didn't breed her orange female, instead she had her 'fixed' as she did for all of the cats she rescued over the years. Anita named her new kitten, 'Cat With No Name'. The last time I got a letter from Anita I learned that Cat With No Name grew up, and was a good companion for Anita's older cat.

Over the years, I have lost contact with Anita Clemetson, and I tried to find her. A couple of years after I left the company, Anita also left the company. I am sure that she continued on rescuing feral cats, getting the adults 'fixed', and returning them to where she originally found them, and I am sure that she continued finding good homes for the kittens. I remember that Anita earned her college degree in Art, and she especialy loved making pottery. Online I have seen her name associated with art shows in the Bay Area.

While kittens are dear to look at it is not always easy to find good homes for them, and Anita was very knowledgeable about this fact. She 'placed' many kittens in good homes over the years, and it was not an easy task to find those good homes.

I will always remember Anita for her great kindness towards those tiny, balls of fur, with teeth, and claws that she managed to find homes for. Some day I will see her again and tell her about Daisy Mae and Sweet Georgia. Perhaps with this blog entry I have already reached Anita, and she knows that both Daisy Mae and Sweet Georgia have had good lives. Daisy Mae is the older of the two sisters by three months, and she is still in good health, and may live to 20 as many cats do live to 20, and some live beyond.

As her tribute, following, is Georgie's theme song, which I have sung to her many times over the years...

"Two left feet, but o' so neat, is Sweet Georgia Brown...
Fellas she can't get are fellas she ain't met...
Sweet Georgia Brown
La da la da Sweet Georgia Brown..."

The original song about Sweet Georgia Brown orginated back in the 1920's, in the United States.

UPDATE
Georgie loved her song and I sang it to her today, which is December 20, 2011...she is hanging on, and I think she will be here with us up to Christmas Day...
For the word 'fellas' in her theme song, I often substitute the two words, 'tom cats'

UPDATE
Today is December 28, 2011 and today at 11:55 a.m. Sweet Georgia Brown peacefully, passed away. She lived a very good life with her humans whom all loved her very much. Georgia earned the respect of the other felines in her home both while she was healthy, and after, when she became ill.

Back in late 1994 when I put in my request to Anita Clemetson for another Calico Kitten I told her that the new kitten would be named Sweet Georgia Brown. I chose the name Georgia for someone I admired, and that person is Dr. Georgia Abrams, who is a well known dermatologist, who practices here in California. Dr. Abrams is also my dermatologist, and it turns out that she is also fond of Calico Cats, and was pleased that Sweet Georgia was named in her honor.

This is another true life story from Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2011/2012 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Freedom Is Spelled C-A-R. ...

I found myself thinking today about what an acquaintance said to me recently about her mother, who was getting up in years, and realizing that she was having problems driving, this lady's mother knew that it was time to stop driving her car. She then gave her car away to a close, family member, who was much younger than she. My immediate response to this story was my saying, “How could your mother give up her ‘FREEDOM’?”

As an American living in rural California, where public transit is just now beginning to become a more common, daytime sight, freedom to me is being able to get into my private vehicle, and drive to wherever I wish to at any time of the day or evening with no restriction.
I know that my immediate response to the story I heard about the lady's mother, who gave her car away came from my experience with my late father-in-law, who lived well past his ninety fifth birthday but had to give up ‘his freedom’ ten years before his passing.

My father-in-law was able to maintain his ability to drive, ‘his freedom’, well into his late eighties when he began to develop an age related condition that affected his central vision.
My father-in-law's villain that took away his freedom was a disease called macula degeneration, which was likely caused from working outside all of his life. My father-in-law was a dairy rancher, and he wore eyeglasses to correct his vision that didn’t have U.V. protection built into the glasses because knowledge about what bright, unfiltered sunlight can do to our eyes is a more recent discovery. In years past we didn’t know that unfiltered sunlight, viewed on a daily basis could harm a part of our internal eyes called the macula, which when harmed causes loss of central vision. This villain, this lurking enemy of freedom strikes us when we least expect it, when we are well into our final years.

I will never forget how sad my father-in-law was when he realized that his days of freedom were over, he had lost his ability to drive his own car to wherever he wanted to go, whenever he wanted to travel.
I will never forget how we all suffered along with him as he struggled with his discovery.

Freedom to roam where we wish to in our cars, when we wish to, is as American a concept as Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken is. When the time comes, it is as difficult for us to give up our freedom to drive our own cars, as it is to give up breathing.

Enjoy; be happy, enjoy your American freedoms; enjoy life.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra

Time Waits For No Man Or Woman...But Time Stood Still On September 11, 2001...

I originally posted this blog entry on September 10, 2010, and it is no longer visable in this online blog. When I originally wrote this entry I cried...that's how deeply I was affected by what transpired back in New York, on September 11, 2001.

Following is my blog entry in honor of those, who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.

Today is September 10, 2010, tomorrow is September 11 the anniversary date of the most horrific event I have ever witnessed in my entire life. I found myself thinking today of an old phrase; “Time waits for no one,” when I was a youngster that phrase was rewritten and sung in a song by Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones musical group;

“And time waits for no man, and it won't wait for me
Yes, time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me

I witnessed nine eleven via my television from the comfort of my home, which only adds to the horror of what I saw that day. Here I was safe, far away from the suffering, the crushing, fiery deaths of so many of my fellow Americans, and all I could do was stare wide eyed, in disbelief at my television set.
Time stood still for me that day.

I remember that day here in California going out in my car to take care of necessary things I had to do, and leaving my car’s head lights on in the bright sun light to show my feeling of oneness with all the other drivers, who also had their car head lights on that day. We all acted as one to show our comradeship with each other, and our comradeship with those fellow Americans who lost their lives in New York City and Washington D.C. that day on September 11, 2001.

Time was suspended, it seemed that time did wait that day, not just for me but for all Americans that day; it was like the Earth had stopped spinning around our Sun. Here in California we were all like Zombies moving about not thinking about our own problems that day but instead thinking of those people three thousand miles away on the East Coast of our country, who were destroyed by the senseless acts of so few uncaring individuals, who had no regard for the gift of life that our Lord has given to all of us here on Earth.

I will never forget what I saw that day, and I don’t want to forget what I saw.
History is a lesson for those of us who live through it to survive, and history should never be forgotten because as soon as we forget history, it will come back on us, and hit us smack dab between our eyes, again!
Do not forget!

God Bless all who suffered on September 11, 2001. God Bless all who survived, and are still suffering from injuries sustained from the rescue efforts made on that day.
God Bless all of us who remember, and still sit quietly remembering that day, shedding tears over what we witnessed from so far away.
God Bless all of those, who were in New York City and Washington D.C. on that fateful day, who still remember.

As long as God is with us we will not allow this to happen to us again; we will not allow time to stand still for us again, here on our Earth!

Thanks for reading,

Carol Garnier Dutra

Time Waits For No Man Or Woman...But Time Stood Still On September 11, 2001 was re-published in The Colorado Lookout for October 2010. The Colorado Lookout is the official publication of the U.S.S. Colorado Alumni Association Inc.

Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Bi-Coastal Pooch...

I love cats but while I love cats I have also loved two dogs in my life. My first dog was a solid black, Cocker Spaniel that my parents bought for me as a companion dog when I was between the ages of four to five years old.

In my family I was an only child with two grown up brothers; both were students in high school when I was born. I also had an older sister who was eighteen years old when I came along in the family, and she was living in Nova Scotia, Canada.
I was an only child with three grown up siblings.

This was why my father felt that I needed to have a companion to keep me company, and he chose a friendly, black, male puppy, a Cocker Spaniel as my dog that I named Black Pal, and alternatively I called my dog Little Pal.
My older brother Bobby (Robert Steven) had a beautiful white, Spitz, purebred dog he called ‘White Pal’ so you get the idea of where I got my dog’s name!

When I was eight years old my father bought the family a home that was located on the outskirts of the City of Lynn, Massachusetts where Lynn bordered with the Town of Saugus. Early one morning, shortly after we moved to our home, my father went out on an errand to the local hardware store that was just over the boarder in the small Town of Saugus.
He saw Little Pal following him but he didn’t think that anything would go wrong.

When my father reached the end of our street he crossed the major thoroughfare, which is called Boston Street. Black Pal followed, and was struck by a car. My little friend was gone, and my father felt terrible that it happened because my dog followed him that morning.

My father told my mother to make sure that she took me to a pet store to pick out another dog. I chose an orange colored, male, Wire Haired Terrier that I named Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier. Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier is the doggie, who later became my bi-coastal pooch.

Wire Haired Terriers were originally bred as ‘ratters’. They are aggressive enough to go after rats and kill them, thus this breed of dog protects food crops when in storage from infestations of rats, among other rodents. Terriers in general are good protection dogs for children, and they are loyal to their human companions. Sandy was sometimes difficult when he insisted that he wanted to accompany me to school. I had to sneak out of the house every morning, and the first thing I would do when I returned from my school day was I would take my Sandy out for a walk. During the day my mother would often tether sandy on a very long chain in our back yard so he could have some sunshine, and be able to relieve himself. I had the chore of cleaning up after the little guy, and I didn’t mind because he was such a friendly, special dog.

After my father passed away in March of 1959 my mother and I moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, with both of my brothers. After living in the city of Poughkeepsie for a couple of months we moved to our new home in the Town Of Poughkeepsie that was called Red Oaks Mill.
Sandy moved along with the family to both locations in New York.
I remember the warm summer night when someone entered our open garage, and crept down our basement stairs hiding in our dark basement much like a rat would hide and wait for their chance to do damage.

My mother was in the habit of watching late night TV in our split-level family room, which was adjacent to the garage, and above the basement. There was a locked door between the garage, and the family room. My mother watched Johnny Carson, and before Johnny was host of the Tonight Show my mother watched Jack Parr. Sometimes I would stay up late and watch TV with her, especially in the warm summer months.

We kept a large cage with birds in our family room, a pair of parakeets I named Sam and Abie. My Sandy McTavish MacGregor stayed in this large family room at night. Sandy was tethered on a long leash yet he could reach to the door that was between the garage and the family room. From this vantage point he could also reach to the first two carpeted stairs that led upstairs to the third level of this split level home.

I remember that night; my younger, older brother Bob first came to the room my mother and I occupied, and he woke us up.
He told us that he heard Sandy growling!
The door to the downstairs family room was closed, yet my brother could hear my dog growling.

We all got up, and made a lot of noise to try to scare off any intruder(s), while one of my brothers called the police. Back then all phones were in-house phones; we didn’t have cell phones back in the summer of 1961.

I remember how afraid I was as I stood in back of my brother Bob as he opened the door to the family room. Bob had a baseball bat in his hands in case he had to use it. He flicked on the lights, the light switchs were located both at the top of the stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs. We couldn't see anyone in the family room but we could see that our back door was wide open. And when we checked the 'locked' door between the garage and the family room we found that the locked door was open; it looked like the lock had been jimmied.
On the railing leading up the stairs from the family room to the kitchen there was a burn, a large burn like that from a cigar, not a cigarette. Cigar smoke was in the air. The rug was also burned below the railing, and there was ash on the rug. There was some blood splattered on the linoleum leading to the open back door.
Sandy was unhurt!

It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. My brother Michael remembered that he had the garage open earlier that evening, while he was working on the front lawn. Someone entered our garage unseen, and crept down the stairs to the lowest level in our house, and hid in our basement. Sandy saved all of our lives that night.
We all believed this to be the case!
So when my brother Michael, my mother and I moved across the country to California in November 1962 we took our Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier with us. Sandy earned his keep that night back in the summer of 1961 when he saved his family from the intruder, whom I have since thought of as being like a rat, hiding in the dark basement waiting until he could come out of hiding, and do his harm.

My Sandy became a true bi-coastal pooch when he moved out to California with his family!

It was during the winter of 1964-65 when one night I returned home from a date, and I opened my front door; Sandy ran past me out into the night, and down Blossom Hill Road, which is where we were living then. The night was dark, and I was young so I didn't try to follow him. In the morning I went out in my car, and looked for him. I looked and looked, and called his name but I never found my Sandy.

My mother told me that when dogs get old, and they know that their ‘time’ is coming that sometimes they will leave the family they love, and search for a place to rest in peace, away from their family. I don’t know where my mother got this idea that old dogs go away from their homes to die, but it helped me in some way to endure the pain of losing my brave little terrier, Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier; my Bi-Coastal Pooch.

This has been a true life story from my life; Carol Garnier Dutra.

Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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The Scent Of Wild Lilacs Transports Me Back In Time...

The scent of blooming, wild lilacs, drifting on gentle drafts of warm, spring air bring back fond memories to me of my New England childhood home, my first ‘real’ home where I finally acquired a bedroom of my own.

My happiest memories of my childhood start for me in 1952, which was the year I turned eight, and is the year when my father purchased our first family home that was located on the outskirts of the city of Lynn, Massachusetts. The 'country like' more rural than city street where we moved to was located where the cold, gray city streets of Lynn fell back onto the horizon, and the warm, funky Town of Saugus began.

When I turned eight years old, and my father bought our family our own home across town, the only thing I regretted about moving away from the old neighborhood was leaving St. Patrick’s; both the church and the school. After we moved across town my parents enrolled me in Burrill Elementary, which was the local public school for my new neighborhood.

The home my father bought us was situated on a large parcel of land, which was mostly undeveloped land still in the state that it had been in for centuries. Our back yard led upward; up into an area of hills that went up, and then leveled out only to start climbing again, up, up and then leveling out again. We didn't have city sidewalks on this street. The street where we moved to was paved with blacktop and a cement, half circle shaped gutter ran the length of our 'new' street to carry away both rainfall and snow melt to the sewer entrance located on the city street below.

Off on the other side of the street that was at the end of our street, which was called Oakland Avenue, was Boston Street. Across Boston street was the Saugus River, which I am sure is still flowing today to the Atlantic Ocean carrying excess rainfall and winter snow melt the same as it did back when I was a child living on Oakland Avenue.

Before moving across town I had been a ‘city child' living the life of a city child in an apartment, which was called a ‘flat’ back when I lived in the inner part of Lynn. There were sidewalks to walk on in front of our city apartment, and there was snowfall in the winter on those city sidewalks that needed to be shoveled off.
When my father moved our family to our own home in the more countrified part of Lynn I was transported into a different world from the one I had known and grown up in for the first eight years of my life.

One of the many changes I experienced was there were no sidewalks in front of our new rural home to shovel snow off of.

In addition to the new environment in my outside world was the addition in my life of a new indoor environment in the form of a bedroom of my own, which was one half of a finished attic.

I went from not having any privacy in my life to inheriting a private bedroom that was two or three times the size of ordinary bedrooms! Each of my brothers also got their own bedrooms in our own home.

Everyone in our family was happy while we lived there.

I remember that first summer in my new neighborhood I became entranced with the visual beauty of the woods that started at and were a part of my back yard. The heavy perfume of the wild lilacs growing in my father's wood added to my enchantment.

I took silent possession of these woods.

These woods became my playground for the years from age eight to fifteen, every year, from spring to winter and then back to spring again.

Often during the hot humid days of summer, I would pack charcoal pencils and a pad into my knapsack, and head to the cool refuge of my tree canopied wood. In quiet, shaded areas I often found lily of the valley flowers growing that I would sketch. Delicate silvery white, lace edged bells suspended and drooping on slender stems rising from the soil. On my forays I also often found hot orange colored, bell shaped tiger lily flowers, half hidden within cool earthy smelling, shallow furrows. I soon learned to enjoy both of these hidden flower prizes while they remained in their original homes. Once picked from their original earthen homes, they faded fast and died!

I loved my woods, and all I learned treking through it, listening, watching the creatures and plants living and growing there, taught me about the cycles of life within nature. I loved all the natural lessons of nature that I learned because they showed God’s Love to me, in His miracles of renewal in nature in our world. This was definitely one of the happiest and most learning times of my life.

I have read that during the last Ice Age, glaciers spread over New England with heavy ice flows moving downward with such force that they actually cut off the tops of mountains, and leveled out what was previously land with high mountains. That explains for me the topography of my back yard wood that I loved so much as a child.

The land where my wood existed contained along with all the growing flowers and small creatures living there, many trees, which included pine, birch, chestnut and oak trees. There were large, rounded boulders too that I would climb, many were over 15 feet in height, and must have weighed tons. This wood, my woods was where several dozen large, wild lilac bushes grew; and were visible from our back porch. Both purple and white varieties of lilac populated this area. It was an amazing sight every spring to look up from our back porch, up into my woods, and see the purple and white colors take form on the wild bushes as the heavy hanging clusters of flowers formed. While my visual sense was overwhelmed by the color, my sense of smell was also overwhelmed with the sweet perfume emanating from these bushes that were trimmed only by the forces of nature; hence their wide and tall stature.

During the winter all of my trees and my lilac bushes alike, which were bundled up in my wood, were encased with sparkling fairy like crystals of ice, and often they were packed with heavy snow. So the miracles of rebirth, re-leafing and re-flowering that took place every spring were indeed miracles from God.

For anyone reading this story that has lived only on the hot and dry West Coast of the U.S. it may seem strange to think of rain fall in the summer but that is what it does in New England; it rains during the spring and summer months, and often the rain comes down while the sun is shining.

I remember it raining several times a week during the summers that I lived there. Summers in New England were always hot and humid with sudden drenching bursts of rain that often ended as fast as the storms started. Sometimes loud claps of thunder could be heard with streaks of lightening that would stretch across the now darkened sky looking much like a heavenly release of anger.

Large drops of warm rainwater that I called angel tears, would fall from the darkened clouds hitting the ground; splashing out into many more drops of warm rain spreading outward; then finally soaking into the ground. I loved to walk in the rain back then despite the danger of summer electrical activity. I still love the sound of rain hitting the pavement, hitting my roof, even today.

Lilacs need a lot of water, heat, and they also need shade from the drying sun to thrive. Our wild lilac bushes in my wood had all three conditions. The tall mature trees shaded the many wild bushes with their spring, summer leaved canopy, and the frequent warm summer rains kept the bushes green and lush looking, full of fragrant scent and deep color throughout both the spring and summer months, all of the years that I lived in this home.

I remember during both in the spring and in the summer my mother opening her upstairs, kitchen pantry window, which faced my wood, to allow fresh air to enter the house, and I will always remember the heavy, sweet fragrance of our lilacs drifting through that pantry window; filling our home with their sweet fragrant presence.

This story is my true life memory of where I lived from the age of eight to fifteen; this story is my memory of our New England home that was filled with the sweet scent of wild lilacs every spring and summer. And this story is also my memory of the home my father bought for my family where I finally got both a bedroom and a woods of my own!

I will always remember the joy my whole family felt while we lived in our New England home... My father passed away on Friday March 13, 1959, and I was only fourteen years old. I got to live in my much loved New England home up to six months past my fifteenth birthday. This was when my family moved to New York State, and a whole new adventure awaited me there.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

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Tale Of A Tail

I am a cat’s person; owned and manipulated by a clever young male cat colored soft gray with a proud white chest that stands out like a starched ruffle on a lady’s blouse. He sports a white upward pointing arrow on his forehead between his eyes that melts down his nose widening into an upside down funnel shape, covering his mouth, engulfing his jaw, chin and softly settling onto his chest. In the center of all this white is a pert berry pink nose. His eyes are two green lanterns that pick up all available light in a darkened room and reflect it back as two glowing orbs. Because of his eyes Mr. Peepers is the name I gave him when he moved in three years ago. Today his body weight is only ten pounds even though he is a full-grown cat. His body length is longer than most cats with a tail that is bushy, white tipped as though it had been used as an artist’s paintbrush. Nature made him small, physically beautiful, and endowed him with an inquisitive, intuitive nature that sometimes gets him in dutch with other family members.

I remember the first six weeks that Mr. Peepers lived in our home. He had been a wild, feral kitten living in the outside world with his wild, feral mother. Mother cat spent many days during the previous summer months in our backyard. She always had her kitten with her. One day, after the winter cold had set in, an automobile claimed mother cat’s life.

On my backyard patio stoop I kept a large, brown cardboard box crammed full with warm blankets for the feral cats to find refuge in during cold, winter nights. I knew the wild, feral kitten would return alone that night to the security and warmth of the blanket filled box. I waited until I was sure he was in the box, and then I carefully pressed down on the mound of blankets in the front of the box that obscured my view of the back of the box. To my delight there was a pair of large kitten ears visible, followed by a pair of frightened, bewildered eyes. I captured him gently, carefully lifting him out of the box, and took him away from the stinging cold night into the warmth of my home.

Through the patience of his adopted human family, Mr. Peter Peepers was ready at the end of six weeks to make his first visit to the vet. He had begun to relax and explore his new surroundings; I had waited for him to come to this state of acceptance before venturing out on a car trip with him.

The visit to the vet was uneventful until the doctor gave him his first shot. He had been nervous but steady as he stood on the cold metal examining table being poked and probed, weighed and inspected. At the exact moment the vaccination needle pierced his skin he let out a screech heard clear out to the waiting room four doors away down the adjoining hall. His small thin body became elastic, and shot out stretching three times its normal length. I heard the doctor say with a nervous sounding voice, “wild kitty.”

Since the early days, Mr. Peepers has trained me as well as I have trained him. When I am home alone during the day, Mr. Peepers is always near me. He sleeps on a big rust colored pillow on the couch next to my chair while I do my homework. If I am in the kitchen cooking, he is close by under the table always ready to rush out to greet me when I spot him there, and I acknowledge his presence. There are times when he will jump up to the kitchen counter if I say its okay to do so, and he will lean against me as I give him an open arm, circle hug.

I truly am a cat’s person. I am trained to feed him when he is hungry. I book a kennel for both him and his lady friend cat if I am going away on a trip over two days in length. I always know when he wants or needs attention.

It takes patience and careful observation of a cat to understand his needs. In the process you realize that the cat is an intelligent creature. You might find as a result of your study that you become a cat’s person, the same as I am!

This has been a true-life story of Carol Garnier Dutra.

Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra

Note;
I wrote this short story when I was a student at Evergreen College; it was for my first English class, which was with Mr. Jacobs. I am reproducing it here as a tribute to Mr. Peter Peepers Dutra who shared our lives along with Ms. Whiskers Dutra for many years back when my family lived in San Jose, California. Peter was the cat-son of one of Mrs. Gertrude Bold’s feral cats. Mrs. Bold was a neighbor who lived on an adjacent street to the street we lived on, and she was the lady who kept many feral cats in her backyard, and in her garage.

After his companion cat friend, Whiskers, passed away at the age of twenty (20) Peter grew depressed to the point that he stopped washing himself. I knew this was the case because he started to smell!
Healthy, happy cats always keep themselves clean and groomed; this is a cat’s true nature to be clean, proud of their appearance.

Because Peter stopped taking care of himself I had to take a clean washcloth and wring it out with water washing him off following with a towel dry so he would be presentable to be in the house.

I have known people to behave in this depressed manner after losing someone they loved; this was the first time I saw this behavior in a cat, and it tells me how intelligent cats are.

In time, our Peter Peepers grew ill, and left us to be with his cat friend, Whiskers.

I will always be a cat's person thanks to this pair of sweet, loveable felines whom graced our lives for many years with their loving presence.
Carol
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Love Is Not Having To Say You're Sorry...

Love Story, a movie staring Ryan O’Neal and Allie McGraw made back about twenty five years ago, was based on those eight little words; love is not having to say you're sorry.

Is that what love is about?

My husband and I knew an older woman who lived in our neighborhood, in San Jose, who kept 20 feral cats in her garage and back yard. Because she passed away many years ago I will use her real name, which was Gertrude Bold.
I am sure that Mrs. Bold loved her cats because she gave them all a home, and she fed them, which was not a cheap task to accomplish even back when all of this went on.

Mrs. Bold loved her 20 cats but she didn’t have her cats vaccinated against common cat illnesses, and as far as anyone knew she never took any of her cats to a veterinarian, which everyone in the neighborhood figured was because she couldn’t afford to do this.

Mrs. Bold’s cats used her back yard as their litter box.

In the warm summer months it became a real nuisance to go outside, and smell the stink these cats made. I found this situation disturbing because all the cats I have known in my life have been ‘clean’ to the point that they wouldn’t defecate, and just leave it in the open, but Mrs. Bold’s cats followed this behavior.
But still we know that Mrs. Bold loved her cats; that was why she kept them all…in her yard and in her garage.

One day Mrs. Bold’s cats started to die off from an illness. The neighbors, my husband and I began to see dead cats here and there around the neighborhood. It was very upsetting because we didn’t know why Mrs. Bold’s cats were dying off!
As far as I know, no one approached Mrs. Bold to ask if she knew that her cats were dying off. We all knew that she loved her cats; this was why no one in the neighborhood complained about the 20 feral cats Gertrude kept in her backyard, and in her garage.

I managed to capture one of Gertrude Bold’s ill cats, a large ginger tom my husband and I called Thomas O’Malley, which was the name we gave to him whenever we would see him traveling around the neighborhood. Thomas O’Malley seemed to be the leader of the pack of feral cats, and because he appeared to be the ‘lead’ cat, my husband and I called him Father O’Malley at times because his behavior was like that of a father, both a cat father and a father, in the religious sense.
On the other hand there were times when we would say; “There goes Officer O’Malley”, because Thomas, at times, seemed to be a cat police officer, mediating squabbles between the members of the gang of feral cats that lived in Mrs. Bold’s back yard and in her garage.

I took Thomas O’Malley to our veterinarian at the time, a Dr. Anderson who used to have his practice in a small building down the street from San Jose High School. Dr. Anderson ran some tests on Thomas O’Malley, and he found that Thomas was suffering from feline leukemia. So we were sure that since Thomas had leukemia that the other feral, neighborhood cats that Gertrude. Bold cared for, in her garage and in her back yard, must have been dying off from the same illness.

Dr. Anderson was a very kind doctor; he tried to save Thomas O'Malley but it was too late. Thomas O’Malley died from the feline leukemia.

My husband and I really didn’t know Thomas O’Malley, he never lived with us, he was a neighborhood feral cat who lived in Gertrud Bold's back yard, and in her garage, but we could see from looking at Thomas that he was ill. We tried to help him. I guess this was a form of love on our part to care for this cat, when he wasn’t our cat.

Love is not having to say you’re sorry. Love is just doing what you can for another, even when the other is a neighbor cat.

This is a true life story.

Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Food For Thought...

Food is nourishment; food for thought is knowledge. Knowledge nourishes the brain much like a taco nourishes your being. Back when I was a child knowledge was learned from reading books; books with paper pages and covers telling what was inside the book conveyed by either a picture or a descriptive phrase. Today many of us get our food for thought via the Internet on either our computers or our savvy phones. But for the life of me I don’t understand how you can get much nourishment for your brain from reading what is printed out on the screen of a tiny cell phone.

I find myself preferring to do research on my computer as long as I am able to find reliable, trustworthy sites with bona fide information that is not provided solely for the purpose of selling widgets or wazzy-wids at an online retail store. Good research information sites are available, and it helps to know how to search web site addresses for clues as to where sites originate. I learned the hard way that you need to know from where a web site is coming in.

I know that I have taken to spending many more hours reading research material on the Internet rather than going to the local library checking out armloads of books like I used to do. It is less strenuous to ‘search’ online than it is to lug home armloads of library books. Yet still I pray that ‘books’, those with paper pages and covers either soft or hard covers, are never fazed out of existence like books were, in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".
There are still times when I take one of my books from a shelf in my library, and open the cover just to read a story; not to do research.
Books are still for reading stories.

You might call my first computer a Frankstein because it was composed of many pieces that were joined together for the first time in one machine! I loved that computer, and used it as my highway to the ‘library’ of the Internet world up to sometime in June 2004.

In June 2004 I was shopping on EBay, and I strayed from the ‘safe and familiar’ pages venturing instead to their ‘China’ pages. I saw a deep green, jade pendant that was particularly appealing to me so I sent an inquiry to the seller asking how much it would cost me to have the jade pendant, the one I liked, shipped to my address in California.

I committed a cardinal sin when I made the mistake of setting up my account on EBay so my email that was sent to my mail box on EBay, would be forwarded to my ‘personal’ email account at my I.S.P., which at that time was a small, private operation located in San Jose, California.

My Frankstein, bits and pieces computer was old as computers go. Frankie was seven when the dreaded Chinese code, that was sent all the way from China, into my mailbox, ended its existence.

I spoke in person with the man who headed my I.S.P., and he told me that when I opened my mailbox, on that day, he saw immediately a copious amount of traffic travel from my computer, and pass through his server.
To where it went he did not know.

I told him that what he saw pass through his server was more than just traffic; what he saw pass through his server 'was'
MY COMPUTER!

Everything was taken!
My programs, all of my artwork, all of my compositions, and even my email contacts were taken by the code that was sent to my computer that was sent all the way from China. The loss was devastating to me! Who would do this to me? All I did was ask the price of shipping a deep green, jade pendant from a Chinese ‘seller’ on EBay, to me in California.

In time I learned that a ‘mass surveillance’ computer program similar to NarusInsight was in use by the Chinese government. The purpose of this program was to capture information on the Internet via emails on Chinese dissidents, who were sending information back and forth between them selves trying to set up a revolution against the Chinese government! At least this is what the news article I read said was going on.

So were Chinese dissidents working on EBay posing as ‘sellers’ of deep green, jade pendants that would be wanted by me in California?

Did the Chinese government’s agents think my asking how much it would cost to ship that beautiful, deep green, jade pendent to California was somehow a code for “how many Chinese dissidents does it take, working on EBay, selling deep green, jade pendants, to overthrow the Chinese government?”
Is this what they thought?

I couldn’t salvage anything from Frankie; nothing was left; the rogue code broke through my ‘fire wall,’ and completely wiped my computer out. Because the code broke through my security, and collapsed my ‘fire wall’ I know that code, because it was that powerful, had to be sent by a government agency...an agency in the Chinese government...who else would destroy my computer when I asked how much it would cost to send that deep green, jade pendent to my address in California?

I complained to EBay about what happened to my computer, it was completely gone, and my complaint letters were met with silence on the receiving end.
I did receive one return correspondence from EBay stating that I should have let the email go into the EBay mailbox, and not have had it forwarded to my personal mailbox.
Since they felt this way why did EBay have the option open to forward all email to my own personal mailbox?

I find myself still preferring to do 'research' on my computer as long as I find trustworthy, reliable sites, and when I want to read a book I prefer the kind of book that is made out of paper; printed with ink.
As for shopping I am much more careful these days. No more shopping for me on web sites originating from China on EBay or on any other web site, that sell deep green, jade pendants.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Events in this short story came from my life.
Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra

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The Rescued Easter Sunday Dove...

I've never been a believer of 'old wives tales' until my husband and I experienced first hand, what we learned months later, was an 'old wives tale', predicting a death in a person's family.

Our strange event started on Easter Sunday in April 2009. Our 'paired off' always together cats, Leroy Brown and Loretta Lynn Brown, were sitting together at the large patio door window that looks out on our back porch/patio, and into our backyard. neither cat had been out in the yard on that day because we were too busy to take them out. We never allowed our cats to roam freely where we live because there are too many dangers for cats, here in the rural area we live in. Owls and other predatory birds can attack a cat as well as raccoons and possums, which eye cats as delicious treats.

When Leroy and Loretta would go out into their yard to partake of the sunshine and fresh grass, either my husband or I would stay with them, and when we would go back inside the house, the cats would always go back inside with us.

On this particular Easter Sunday both cats, were watching out the patio window, and they started yowling, I said yowling, not meowing. I rushed to where my cats were seated next to the window/door to find that they were both looking at a small grayish, brownish bundle that was huddled against one of the pillars that supports our patio's roof.



I cautiously opened the patio door, preventing the curious Leroy and Loretta Lynn from exiting the house, and I approached the small bundle. The bundle turned out to be a very frightened bird, a dove, and this was happening on Easter Sunday afternoon. As a Christian I believe that the dove is symbolic of the Holy Ghost, the third part of the Blessed Trinity, and it was Easter Sunday.

I called to my husband to come outside, and he responded. It wasn't the first time we were presented with rescuing a bird in distress but it was the first time we were presented with a dove that needed our help, and it was Easter Sunday afternoon.

The first thing my husband wanted to try was to see if the bird could fly away on its own but we both realized that the little bird was having a difficult time breathing. It was taking its' breaths in gasps. So the breathing issue would have to be resolved first. My husband asked me to bring him a saucer of fresh water, which I did do.

He held the tiny bird in his hand, and dipped its' beak into the water, quickly bringing it up and out of the water within a second. He rubbed the tiny doves' throat to massage it's esophagus, which is the passage through which food travels, The bird coughed, and out from its' throat flew a large seed that had been caught in it's esophagus. The bird started breathing better; it stopped gasping for breath. We figured that the crisis was over, and all the bird needed was to have the seed evacuated from it's throat, and it would be ready to fly away. But this didn't happen. The tiny bird didn't fly away.

We both stayed with the bird for at least a half hour coaching it to fly away but it didn't want to leave us. So my husband asked me to get one of our cat carrier cages from the garage, and I did this putting a clean towel into the cage. My husband put the tiny bundle of feathers into this cage, and he carried the cage into our garage where the contents would be safe from predators. We placed a large, clean towel over the cage to prevent drafts. And we told the dove, "Good night, we will be back in the morning."

Early the next morning, at 6:00 am my husband and I both went into the garage to check on our rescued bird, and when we removed the towel covering the cage the dove let out with a loud coo, coo. That sound to us was a sign that the little creature was feeling much better so we brought the cage outside where we opened the cage, and encouraged the dove to fly away. Once again it couldn't, wouldn't fly away.
We realized at this time that we needed professional intervention to rescue this little bundle of feathers. It was Monday morning, and at 9:00 am I got onto the phone, and called someone I knew that was connected to the local Audubon society. He didn't know where I should take the bird but he was sure that one of the local vets was a wild bird, rescue doctor. I then called several local veterinarians in the Hollister area until I found Doctor Moran, who was the local bird rescue person. The clinic where this doctor is located is the Family Pet Care Center located on East Street here in Hollister. I wrote down the address of this clinic, and called confirming with the clinic that my husband would be bringing in a wild dove that needed professional attention.

Doctor Moran did what he could do for the little bird. He found puncture wounds under the feathers, and confirmed that the dove had a systemic infection, which was the result of some animal mauling it the day before. He gave the little dove a shot of antibiotics, and hoped for the best. The dove didn't make it. It's infection was too far-gone, and the little ball of feathers passed away at the veterinarian's office. I was thankful that my cats had nothing to do with the injury that happened to the dove. Instead they alerted me to the presence of the dove on our back porch. And this caused my husband and I to help the little bird. We thought the issue of the dove that needed to be rescued was over but it wasn't over.

Last spring we had two pairs of doves that would come into our yard, and feast at a seed box that we were keeping on our patio. The injured dove we took to Dr. Moran on East Street was one of these doves. For weeks after this event one of the remaining doves, the mate to the one that died at the vets, would return to our yard, and walk around our patio cooing. This behavior was un-nerving because it showed us that this bird, this little bird was looking for it's mate, and the last place it knew it's mate was before it disappeared, was in our yard. One day, about ten days later after we brought the dove to the vets, I was watching this single dove from my patio window, and I saw it go up to our back garage door, and stand there cooing at the door. This told me how sensitive doves are for this one to realize that we had kept it's mate in our garage after we found it on our back porch, back on Easter Sunday.

Two weeks after we rescued the dove, and took it to Dr. Moran's office where it passed away from an untreatable infection, we noticed that our beautiful deep green leaved bush that would bear deep purple berries in the summer, appeared to be dying. We paid extra attention to the bush, and watered it as it should be watered. Not too much and not too little water was given to this bush. It was spring, and in spring this bush always grew a fresh crop of deep green leaves because it lost all of it's leaves during the winter months. Even though we were especially diligent in caring for our bush the new leaves continued to dry up, dying and turning brown. In time all of the new 'spring' leaves on this bush turned into brown, crinkly, dead leaves.

This bush was located in a plot of earth, next to our back porch, right across from the pillar where we found the huddled, bundle of feathers that was the frightened, injured dove that came to us on Easter Sunday, in April, and died from a systemic infection at the vets office.



It was in early July of the same year when we discovered that our beloved cat, Leroy Brown had a lump in the area of his mouth that could be felt under his chin. The lump turned out to be a salivary gland cancer that was growing under his tongue. Leroy's veterinarian, Dr. White, was ill and was not available to care for Leroy at this time. We had to find another vet, and we took Leroy to Dr. Leroux at the Hollister Veterinary Clinic on Sunnyslope Drive. We thought that we were doing the right thing.

Leroy Brown Dutra died unexpectedly in Dr. Leroux's veterinary clinic after undergoing his third successful surgery on September 18, 2009. Dr. Leroux made it clear to us that Leroy didn't die from the cancer he was fighting, and he didn't die from the surgery. A woman, who worked for Dr. Leroux, allowed Leroy to jump from his cage, and then she chased our dear Leroy around the clinic, two hours after his surgery. Chasing our cat when he was still under the effect of anesthesia was what killed him.

When we were considering where Leroy's grave should be we found that the berry bush that died in our garden was now just a skeleton of black, bare branches, and no longer had a root structure. This bush was located just across from where we found the dove that needed our help, on Easter Sunday morning. it was easy to remove the now dead berry bush; as soon as my husband started to dig the bush up, it just lifted out of the ground. This patch of earth where the berry bush had been became our Leroy's grave.

On Leroy's grave we have placed a memorial for him that is a sculpture of a cat. And all around his memorial I planted a green ground cover, and Hens and Chickens. Hens and Chickens are a succulent that is a thick, green leaved succulent that has a red boarder around the edges of the leaves. Leroy liked the Hens and Chickens in other places in our garden, and often checked them out when he went outside, so I planted some where he rests.

Months after all of this happened to us, my husband and I were watching a television program one evening, and we heard one of the characters in the story say that when a dove dies on your porch it is a sign that someone in your family will die. The dove we rescued didn't die on our porch but it huddled there for safety after something mauled it, and it died later at the veterinarian's office. Then the beautiful berry bush that grew close to where we found the injured dove, died, and a couple of months late, our dear Leroy developed salivary gland cancer; dying while in the veterinarian's care at his clinic. Leroy's grave became the plot of earth where the once beautiful, berry bush used to grow. I've looked it up on the Internet, and it is an old belief that when a dove comes to you and dies on your porch that there will be a death in the family, just like the character in the movie on television stated.

We never believed in 'old wives tales' before the Easter Sunday dove came to us on that day, and we did all we could to help it.

Strange things happen here in Paradise, and this was one of the strangest, most painful things that has happened to us here.

This is a true life story of both Carol Garnier Dutra and Richard Dutra originally published on Tuesday June 1, 2010 in my MOM'S Blog by MOM in Hollister.
Copyright 2010/2011/2012
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Leroy's memorial before we planted the ground cover and his Hens and Chickens.
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My Mother's Love Sustained Me Throughout The Years...

A doctor told my mother that I would be ‘stillborn’. This was back in January 1944.

The photo to the right of this post is my mother, Christine Garnier, and the young child with her is...me!

My name is Carol Garnier Dutra a.k.a. MOM in Hollister.
During the summer of 1995 when I was 51 years old I went to a professional hypnotherapist, licensed by the State of California, and paid what was to me at that time a whopping fee of $200 to have my memory regressed in time in order to resolve an issue I was dealing with in my life. I did this action because I knew that there had to be something in my past life that triggered a fear I felt whenever I consulted with a medical doctor.

At the time I sought out the help of a professional hypnotherapist I had no idea of what I would learn about myself that was at the bottom of my fear. What I came away with from my hypnotherapy session was more than just an explanation of my fear of medical doctors.

I was the caregiver for my mother for the last six years of her life from September 1980 to August 1986. All of my life I felt a deep devotion to my mother so when she needed my help there was no question in my mind about helping her.

I left the therapist’s office that day in 1995, with both an explanation of my fear of medical professionals, and I also gained a deeper understanding of what was behind my unyielding devotion to my mother, and my unconditional love for her those last six years of her life.

During my hypnosis session, the therapist doing my regression didn’t find an event in my recent memory that seemed important enough to give me a panic response whenever I consulted a medical professional. The therapist made the decision to move my memory farther back in time. I know this may sound strange to some persons; in an effort to learn what was causing my fear of doctors the therapist regressed me back in time to when I was still an unborn fetus in my mother’s womb.

I remember as a child, my mother telling me, that when she was five months pregnant with me, she fell off the back porch of the rental that she, my father and my two brothers lived in. The railing gave away when my mother leaned on it as she was sweeping the porch landing. My mother fell forward, off the porch, which was 5 feet above the ground below. Her left foot was caught between two of the up and down rails that constituted part of the porch railing.

As she fell, her caught foot stopped her fall, and this action resulted in her leg being broken. When the top portion of my mother’s body hit the blacktop her right arm was broken when she put her arm in front of her face to protect her face.
I remember my mother had a tiny dark spot on her right cheek where she told me there was a small rock embedded into her cheek that was a result of her falling off the porch that day.

A passing neighbor saw my mother hanging from the porch, and called an ambulance. My mother, Christine Garnier, was taken to Lynn Hospital where she spent several weeks in the hospital, and later at home she was bedridden the remainder of her pregnancy.
My mother told me that everyone at the hospital thought that the 5-month fetus she was carrying was dead because it stopped moving after she had her accident.
That fetus was I.

Back in 1944 we didn’t have fetal monitors, which we have today where you can actually see a fetus inside of the mother’s womb. So no one had a way to see inside my mother to verify if the fetus was dead or alive. I am surprised that the doctor who attended my mother in Lynn Hospital couldn’t tell that I was still alive by listening to my heartbeat? What I am saying here is that I do believe that the doctor attending my mother lied to her, and my mother didn't believe him. I was alive; I was very alive! I must have been stunned when my mother fell that day, and I must have not moved much after her accident mainly out of a primal instinct that could be called, 'fear'. My mother told me that it was a surprise to everyone, except her, when I was born in the middle of May, alive, healthy and quite vocal!

The local newspaper, The Lynn Telegram News, published a story about my birth calling me the ‘miracle baby’ because of my mother’s terrible accident, and because I was born alive and healthy. That was the entire story my mother told me about her accident that happened to her on that gray, cold day in January 1944. All these events happened to my mother when she was only thirty eight (38) years old!

During my hypnosis session in 1995 I told the therapist, who was regressing me, that some time after my mother had her accident I could hear a male voice telling her she had both a broken leg and a broken arm, she was facing a long recovery, and it would be better for her if she terminated her pregnancy. This same person stated that I must be dead since I was not moving.

Today I realize that because my mother was 5 months pregnant, termination of her pregnancy meant that if she agreed to the termination she would have a ‘late term abortion’ where a fully formed baby is broken up into pieces inside of the mother, and all of the pieces are then sucked out of the mother.

As an adult undergoing hypnotic regression, I realized that the person who was urging my mother to terminate her pregnancy was the doctor who was assigned to her case when she was admitted to Lynn Hospital. So it follows that at some time in my adult life my subconscious mind had already made the connection between the person who tried to convince my mother to have an abortion, and medical doctors.

Since undergoing hypnotic regression, I have learned that clinical studies have been done where music has been played for unborn fetuses, resulting with the children, once they are born, showing a preference for the same type of music as was played near their mothers while the fetuses were still in their mothers’ wombs.
From these studies the conclusion has been made that an unborn fetus of at least 20 weeks term, can hear and remember the sounds of the world outside of it’s mother’s womb. A fetus of 20 weeks is a fetus of 5 months. I was a fetus of 5 months when my mother had her accident.

I was with my mother as she passed away peacefully in the summer of 1986. I was never able to ask her about what happened in Lynn Hospital after her accident back in 1944, in order to confirm from her that she was encouraged by her doctor to have a late term abortion.

Learning from my hypnotic regression in 1995 that my mother made the decision to not abort me back in January 1944 explained to me my undying love for her, and my determination to keep going physically and mentally when the whole world seemed to be crashing in on me during the six years I cared for her. During those six years I was faced with watching her health slowly deteriorate up to that day she passed away from pneumonia in August 1986 at the age of 79.

My mother’s love sustained me through out those worst years of both her life and my life, and in some ways those years when I cared for her, were the most learning years of my adult life.

Since my hypnotic regression in 1995 I became gradually less afraid of doctors, and today I no longer have a fear of medical doctors thanks to learning the truth of what caused my former fear.

It is always better to know the truth than to fear the truth!

This story is a true-life story of Carol Garnier Dutra written and published on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 in an independent blog of my creation. This true life story has also been published in my Carol Garnier Dutra's Blog.

Copyright © 2010/2011/2012 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Posted by MOM in Hollister, CA at 12:40 PM
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Responsibility Is A Concept That Is Learned...

Responsibility is a concept that is learned at some point in life by most people.

I vividly remember the day, back in 1953 when I was nine years old, and in the fourth grade at Burrill Elementary School when I realized what the word responsibility meant.

After the end of the previous school year, when I finished the third grade at St. Patrick’s Elementary School, my father moved our family into our newly purchased family home located on a street composed of hills that would level out and then climb again, which was called Oakland Avenue. Oakland Avenue was situated in the City of Lynn yet was on the boarder with the Town of Saugus, Massachusetts. This was the year I would be in forth grade, and it was my first year in a ‘public’ school where my instructors were not Catholic Nuns.

I still remember that morning in early spring when I had almost completed my first year in the public school, as I rushed down the sidewalk, that bordered Boston Street on my way to school. Back when I was a child living in Lynn, I never saw a ‘school’ bus. You walked to school or you took public transportation if a bus route was between your home and your school. There was no public bus route between my elementary school and my home, so I walked.

As I rushed down the sidewalk I noticed something moving inside a hedge a few feet away from me. As I neared the activity in the hedge I realized that the movement in the hedge was coming from a small, brown bird, fighting for it’s life, trying to free itself from being entangled in the hedge by a long string that was wrapped around the birds legs, and caught in the twigs within the hedge. It was spring, and in spring I was used to witnessing wild birds fly by me, carrying small twigs and pieces of string to build their nests.

I stopped and looked at the little bird, I heard its 'tweets' asking me for help. I knew that I didn’t have any time to spare; if I stopped to help the bird then I would be late for school, and I didn’t like to call attention to myself by being late for school. I had to make a choice and the choice I made was to stay, help the bird, and be late for school.

It took me several minutes to do, yet I was able to untangle the bird’s legs from both the string and the hedge. I watched it fly away. I remember thinking to myself that I hoped it had learned a lesson to be more careful with string while flying so close to a hedge.
What I didn’t realize was that I was the ‘one’, who had learned a lesson that morning, a valuable life lesson. I resumed my half running, half walking trek on to school, knowing fully that I was going to be late.

When I reached my school no one was in the schoolyard. I was late!
Again, I had to make a choice.
Do I tell my teacher what I did, which was a ‘good deed’ or should I be silent because telling the truth would seem to be a plea for ‘mercy’, it would be making an ‘excuse’ instead of just saying I was sorry that I was late.

My teacher was angry with me. I was only nine years old, and I took responsibility for my actions; I didn’t make any excuses for being late. I just told my teacher that I was sorry that I was late for school. I grew up a lot that day!

I can’t say for absolute sure what made me do what I did that day, choosing to help the wild bird, knowing that it would make me late for school. I can't say for absolute sure what made me just say that I was sorry for being late, and not making an excuse for being late by telling the story about what I did to rescue the bird in the hedge caught up in the string it was taking to a nest it was building.

Maybe what I did and said that morning, had something to do with the three years I spent being educated at St. Patrick’s Elementary, being taught by the nuns at that school. I know that attending St. Patrick's Elementary had a profound affect that had something to do with my attitude toward what I did then, and what I do in my life today. Whatever it was that shaped my personal ‘self’, whatever it was that made me do the right thing that day, and take responsibility for my actions, I am thankful that I turned out as I did.

Carol Garnier Dutra
This short story is a true story that happened to me.

Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Safe Online Shopping Thanks To ShopSafe From Bank Of America Visa...

If you have a Bank ofAmerica Visa credit card I hope you give ShopSafe a try. I have been using the ShopSafe system for online and phone purchases for some time now and I love how simple and worry-free it is to use.

This is how I found ShopSafe:
One day, while checking on our Bank of America online Visa charges I noticed on the page I was looking at that BofA was offering something new that they were calling ShopSafe. I clicked the ShopSafe online address that I saw on my online Visa charge page, and I was directed to the ShopSafe page.

Here's how easy ShopSafe is to use:
I quickly learned that I could assign an amount of money to a 'surrogate' credit card number and use the 'new' number to make a purchase either online or over the phone. If something were to happen to the database at the merchant's online store, where my 'surrogate' credit card number was stored, no one could use my credit card number because it had already been used by the merchant where I made my purchase. Each ShopSafe number becomes a 'dedicated' Visa credit card number that can be used by only the first merchant that enters it into the Visa database.

In addition to this safeguard, the amount of money that I assigned to the credit card number can not be changed by anyone, not even the merchant. The only person who has control over the ShopSafe number, and the amount of money that is assigned to the ShopSafe Visa number is the owner of the original Visa credit card number.

Example: Say I assign three hundred dollars ($300.00) to a ShopSafe number, and I spend two hundred and twenty of those dollars ($220.00) on a purchase that leaves eighty dollars ($80.00) in the number that has not been used. I can go back to the same merchant and charge the remaining money on another purchase but I cannot use the remaining money to make another purchase with a different merchant. To make a charge with a different merchant I have to get another surrogate Visa number for the new merchant, and assign whatever amount of money that I need to the new number. Numbers have a 'shelf life' that the owner of the Visa assigns to them. I usually get six (6) months assigned to each number that I take out at the ShopSafe online page.

How it works for the merchant:
When the merchant calls in to Visa with the number you give him or her for your purchase it goes into a database, and the charge is re-routed by the bank to your 'real' Visa credit card number. The next day you should be able to go online to look at your Visa credit card charges, and see the charge from the merchant who used your 'surrogate' ShopSafe Visa credit card number to make the purchase at his or her online store. It's as simple as that! You never have to tell the merchant that you are using ShopSafe.

I don't know why Bank of America is not advertising ShopSafe. I know others that use the ShopSafe system for online and phone purchases, and they love it as much as I do.

Of course when I purchase goods in person at a store I use my regular Visa credit card instead of ShopSafe.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Carmine Food Coloring Is From Bugs ... Do You Want To Eat Bugs?...

I originally published my 'rant' on Carmine food coloring made from bug bits back in 2010 in my consumer blog. I think this information is important, especially for parents of children, that it deserves to be published again, here in my main blog.
Thanks,
Carol

This is my ‘Rant’ on bug bits and bug parts used as food coloring in our food chain, and the same bug parts used for coloring cosmetics. Often this food/cosmetic coloring made from bugs is to blame for 'hidden' allergies that affect both adults and children. It is often difficult to diagnose this allergy because most people are not aware that Carmine coloring comes from crushed beetles.

Sometimes these allergies manifest in adults that have become sensitized as they age. But children are more often the ‘victims’ of this insidious red/pink/purple food color when it is in foods such as Minute Maid Fruit Punch and brightly colored yogurts and candies.

This insidious food color is often called 'NATURAL' because it comes from bugs; bugs are 'NATURAL' but why would anyone in the civilized world want to consume BUGS?

Carmine, not my uncle Carmine but instead the red/pink or purple coloring that is used to color some foods and commercially available, drugstore variety cosmetics, especially lipstick and blush, is obtained from the Cochineal or the Polish Cochineal Beetle, which is a scaled insect that is raised on beetle farms specifically for the purpose of harvesting the red/pink or purple color from the beetles hard shell, body casing. I guess you know by this second paragraph that this post is about both the BAD and the UGLY in our consumer world!

Some cosmetic brands that use Carmine coloring in their products are Revlon Cosmetics, Maybelline Cosmetics, L’Oreal Cosmetics and many other cosmetics that are commonly found in drug stores or regular grocery stores.

There are cosmetics available that do NOT use Carmine as a red/pink/purple coloring agent. Stores like Whole Foods and some shops that sell vitamin preparations often carry such cosmetics that don’t contain Carmine. And the prices of the cosmetics without Carmine are about the same as the price of the cosmetics that do contain Carmine.

There are also many shops on the Internet that sell Carmine FREE lipstick and blush colored with either mineral or vegetable coloring.
Check labels on all cosmetics for the coloring agent used.

Because I don’t like the idea of beetle body parts providing the red/pink/purple coloring in my lipstick, I buy and use a lipstick made by a manufacturer called Gabriel that makes some red and pink colors that I use that are NOT colored with Carmine. Here again you have to read the ingredients to make sure that the lipstick you choose does not contain Carmine.

I obtain my Gabriel brand lipstick through the Internet at a shop called White Rabbit that is located in Half Moon Bay, California. Most Gabriel colors do not contain Carmine and they do NOT contain petroleum either. Petroleum dries out the skin and lips so it is best to NOT have petroleum in any cosmetics.

Petroleum products at first seem to moisturize the skin and lips but as time goes on the constant use of petroleum products produces a drying effect. Chapstick brand lip balm in the tube is a good example of a petroleum based lip balm that has a drying effect on the lips. The reason petroleum is used so often in lip balms sold in regular drug and grocery stores is because the profit margin to the manufacturer, and the resale profit margin to the store, is greater cheaper ingredients are used to make products, and using petroleum in cosmetics is much cheaper that using oils like jojoba or safflower in a lipstick.

Another place where Carmine is used is in the food industry, especially in yogurts and fruit juices, and it can be found in some ice cream.

I love Activia Yogurt but I will buy only the vanilla or the peach flavor because these are the two flavors where they do NOT use Carmine to color the yogurt.

Minute Maid brand fruit juice uses Carmine to color their fruit punch flavor, fruit drink a bright red color. Many mothers serve this brand of fruit punch to their children because they trust the Minute Maid brand name, and they may NOT be aware that it is Carmine that is used to make this juice a bright red color.

I have read that Carmine food coloring can cause some people to go into anaphylactic shock. Anaphylactic shock can kill a person.

If a woman is wearing a lipstick colored with Carmine, and she kisses a child on the face that is allergic to Carmine it can cause a reaction on the child’s skin. If the same woman kisses a man on the lips, who is allergic to Carmine, the allergic reaction can be much worse that an allergic reaction on the surface of the skin.

Most allergic reactions have been reported to Carmine when it is used as a coloring in food products.

The beetle that is crushed to obtain the red/pink or purple color from its outer shell is a living creature, and because these bugs are living creatures they are composed of their own form of protein in the form of amino acids that are particular to their species of beetle.

All living creatures are composed of amino acids arranged into whole proteins. We know that allergic reactions are to proteins. Some of the beetles protein must remain in the Carmine food color in order to produce the allergic reactions that have been reported.
Such allergic reactions can be especially tragic in children because often parents are not aware that it is the natural food coloring called Carmine that is causing their child’s asthma or other allergies.

Fruit drinks colored with vegetable food colors like the red color that comes from red beets are a better deal for young children to drink.

Please, don't confuse beets with beetles; beets are a vegetable, while beetles are bugs.

Check labels on both yogurt and fruit juices for the word ‘Carmine’ and if you see this word, you will know that ground, dried, beetle bits were boiled to extract the carminic acid from the bug bits, and then a product like alum or cream of tartar, stannous chloride or potassium hydrogen oxalate was used to precipitate the settling of the bug bits to the bottom of the container that is being used for this process. The settled red bug bits are dried, and in this form they are added to products to obtain red, pink or purple beetle juice color.

Say, wasn’t that the title of a movie about dead people about twenty years ago, Beetle Juice, Beetle Juice…I don’t dare say it three times…

Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra

The following is an abstract taken from a larger article written for PubMed, which is a U.S. government publication.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13679965

[Asthma and allergy due to carmine dye].[Article in Spanish]
Tabar AI, Acero S, Arregui C, Urdánoz M, Quirce S.
Source
Servicio de Alergología, Hospital Virgen del Camino, Pamplona.

Abstract
Cochineal carmine, or simply carmine (E120), is a red colouring that is obtained from the dried bodies of the female insect Dactylopius coccus Costa (the cochineal insect). We have evaluated the prevalence of sensitization and asthma caused by carmine in a factory using natural colouring, following the diagnosis of two workers with occupational asthma. The accumulated incidence of sensitization and occupational asthma due to carmine in this factory are 48.1% and 18.5% respectively, figures that make the introduction of preventive measures obligatory. Occupational asthma caused by inhaling carmine should be considered as a further example of the capacity of certain protein particles of arthropods (in this case cochineal insects) to act as aeroallergens. Carmine should be added to the list of agents capable of producing occupational asthma, whose mechanism, according to our studies, would be immunological mediated by IgE antibodies in the face of diverse allergens of high molecular weight, which can vary from patient to patient. Nonetheless, given the existence of different components in carmine, it cannot be ruled out that substances of low molecular weight, such as carminic acid, might act as haptenes. Besides, since we are dealing with a colouring that is widely used as a food additive, as a pharmaceutical excipient and in the composition of numerous cosmetics, it is not surprising that allergic reactions can appear both through ingestion and through direct cutaneous contact. We find ourselves facing a new example of an allergen that can act through both inhalation and digestion, giving rise to an allergolical syndrome that can show itself clinically with expressions of both respiratory allergy and alimentary allergy.
PMID:
13679965
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Free full text

An alimentary allergy refers to a disease of the digestive tract.


On April 20, 2012 in the San Jose Mercury News it was reported that Starbucks will stop using red food dye made from crushed bugs (Carmine-cochineal beetle extract) in their strawberry flavored mixed drinks, and foods like the raspberry swirl cake, and their red velvet whoopie pie. Isn't it nice that you will no longer be consuming beetle juice in your Starbucks drinks and cakes! In place of the bug juice Starbucks will use red coloring made from lycopene, which is a red food color made from tomatoes. Hoo-rayyyyy for Starbucks!